THE NEW YORKER. claiming his mind still holds military secrets from his work on nuclear weaponry twenty years ago, deny him exit. "Alone Together" was written here and there-Newton, Cape Cod, Mi- ami, New York-and moves back and forth between detailed pleading and terse reminiscence, between glimpses of her blithe momentary surroundings and reflections upon her likely fate of continued ostracism and harassment. As the prose goes along, it seems to gather confidence and esprit: "This book wrote itself, without resistance, so easily that these pages probably should not be called a book." Might we even say it grows more American in style, more breezy and concrete? After all, she was here for five months. One of her last chapters expands upon, in a virtually Thoreauvian manner, the discovery that she wants a house. She has observed that "what Ameri- cans want is a house." Elena Bonner has never had one, always sharing crowded quarters and awkward com- munal arrangements. "I think that the first time I was mistress of my own place was-it's hard to believe-in Gorky, in exile. I do not want that. I want a house. My daughter has a house in Newton, Massachusetts. It makes me so happy to think that she has a house. . . . But it's time for me to pack my bags." Her heart was repaired here, and this testy, perky, brave book was left behind as testimony. Bonner returned to Gorky early last June and dropped from the news until recently, when the world was told that General Secre- tary Gorbachev , personally calling Sakharov on a telephone installed in the physicist's Gorky apartment just the day before, announced that the couple would be allowed to return to Moscow. This is good news, though mixed with that of another dissenter, Anatoly Marchenko, who has died in Chistopol Prison, and of a psychiatrist, Anatoly Koryagin, who has been im- prisoned for protesting the use of psy- chiatry for political purposes. Talking to the Times on his suddenly permissi- ble telephone, Sakharov said he expects to go back to scientific research while continuing to speak out on human rights. His wife, he said, "although she has gotten no worse, is generally a very sick person. . . . She stays at home because she has a heart condition that does not allow her to go out of the house in this kind of weather." Back in Moscow, they have endured count- less interviews, and Newsweek quotes her as saying that "if Gorbachev wants to be consistent, then an am- nesty for prisoners of conscience is necessary. I also think that it is neces- sary for him to include human rIghts in the policy of glasnost [openness]." She hoped her husband could visit America and lamented that "a person with such global thinking has not seen the world, not a single country outside of Russia." "Alone Together" was published simultaneously in ten W est- ern countries and, besides making Elena Bonner likable and real to its readers, seems to have done her no harm and perhaps some good. The relatively happy aftermath of its publi- cation bears out her husband's point that the main weapon in the struggle for human rights is publicity. - JOHN UPDIKE ßRJEFL Y NOTED FICTION PAST CARING, by Robert Goddard (St. Martin's; $19.95). Martin Radford, a young, out-of-work English his- torian, accepts a research assign- ment from a rich South African retired to Madeira and living on an estate once owned by a British con- sul there. The assignment is rooted in a just discovered memoir by the consul, in which he relates his in- volvement in Edwardian politics as Home Secretary under Asquith, his engagement to a beautiful suffrag- ette, and the double and mysterious disaster-the simultaneous termina- tion of both career and engage- ment-that exiled him to Madeira. The South African, seemingly out of natural curiosity, wants to know what happened. But, of course, as Radford only too quickly finds, his search is as much adventure as re- search. This is Mr. Goddard's first novel, but it is a finished piece of work-an old-fashioned deviously plotted novel, rich in duplicity, rich in period and place, and with a stan- dard ("Little did I then realize") narrator of the genre. ALL THE KING'S LADIES, by Janice Law (St. Martin's; $16.95). On the front of the dust jacket, the Sun King stands by a bedpost and stares expectantly at the reader. On the back is his mirror image: a reminder of Louis XIV's love of symmetry and of himself. In between lies the story of Mme. de Montespan, who over the course of seven royal preg- nancies resorts to black magic to keep the King's eyes on her. 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